The Return Of The Hadeans
by Admiral
Summary: The Federation Starship Sundown encounters extra-galactic intruders. [A SUNDOWN full-length feature]
1. Entry

**DISCLAIMER:**_ Star Trek and all related characters are the property of Paramount Pictures, Inc. and CBS-Paramount Television. No copyright infringement is intended. This work of fiction is for entertainment purposes only and no money has changed hands. The original characters and events are the sole property of the author and may not be used without permission._

* * *

**THE RETURN OF THE HADEANS**

**by Darrin Colbourne**

* * *

The Shinto Shrine had just the right look, ancient but scrupulously maintained. It was surrounded by a small courtyard paved with tiled stones marked with ancient prayers to the_ kami_ said to be enshrined within. The courtyard in turn was surrounded by cherry and plum trees and beds of various flowers. Beyond the trees and flowers, the hill the shrine had been built on offered a view overlooking a feudal province in ancient Japan.

Dian, standing just inside the courtyard's_ torii_ gate, admired her handiwork. Her clothes were part of it. She was wearing a pink and white patterned _yukata_ and had her hair up and held in place with ribbon and long pins. She carried a paper fan with a complex death scene painted on it. Every now and then she used the fan to dispel some of the early summer heat that engulfed the area as she waited for her "dance partner" to arrive.

Alenn materialized on the path between the gate and the entrance to the shrine. Dian smiled when she saw her...then frowned at her appearance. Dian put her hands on her hips and called out, "What are you wearing?"

Alenn looked down at herself and then looked up at Dian. "My Battle Dress," Alenn called back. Her "Battle Dress" consisted of a bikini made of gold cloth and armor plate that barely masked the most interesting parts of her curvy, toned body, as well as gauntlets and boots that did completely cover her forearms and calves. The gauntlets and boots were gold cloth and plate as well, so the entire outfit matched the gold band tiara that she always wore in public.

"Why aren't you wearing the yukata I gave you?" Dian said. "I thought we agreed to fully embrace our surroundings this time."

Alenn approached as she said, "I can't fight in one of those things. That's for docile women serving tea. In this I can kick and punch and stab and mean it."

Dian sighed. "I'm beginning to think you don't appreciate the effort I go through to make our battlefield interesting."

Alenn got close to Dian and smirked. "Pssh...'battlefield.' You make a temple, you make a coliseum, you make a junkyard, you make a desert planet with giant worms...all that happens is I come in and kick your behind."

"Big talk from someone who looks like she's dressed for sunbathing. Seriously, the women of your world actually went to war dressed like that?"

"Proudly! We stood at our mens' sides and faced our enemies together..."

"And you used all the jiggling to distract your enemies while the men cut the other mens' heads off?"

"Misdirection is a tried-and-true battle tactic. What's wrong? Afraid you'll be too taken with my beauty to fight properly?"

Dian rolled her eyes. "You dress like a bimbo, you wave your naughty bits at me...all that happens is that I kick your nicely-shaped behind."

"Thank you for the compliment. Computer, Elasian Hound Blades." The computer acknowledged and two long, curved daggers appeared in Alenn's hands."

Dian armed herself more theatrically. "Computer...transformation!" She crouched low and spread her arms as the fan in her right hand stretched and solidified, transmuting into a shiny katana. Dian took the hilt in both hands and rose to a dueling stance, angling the blade toward Alenn. "See? Mine's bigger."

Alenn crouched into an attack stance. "Do the math. Mine have more surface area and the same length of cutting edge."

Dian smirked. "Prove it."

With a war cry, Captain Dian Phua and Lieutenant Commander Alenn, Commanding Officer and First Officer of the Federation Starship Sundown, charged each other.

Their morning workout had begun.

* * *

**0833 HOURS**  
**NOVA-CLASS FEDERATION STARSHIP _SUNDOWN_**  
**FIVE LIGHT-MINUTES FROM THE GALACTIC BARRIER**

"Good Morning," Doctor Sandra Langkowski called out cheerily as she walked in to Sick Bay. She went immediately to the department replicator and ordered a hot chocolate. The nurse sitting at the watch desk, an Andorian called Ren'shar, tracked her with his antennae without looking up from the PADD he was typing on. She took a few seconds to sip the hot chocolate and savor the taste, then turned to Ren'shar and grinned brightly. "So what's for today? Who's sick? Who's faking sick to get out of scrub duty?"

"I'm just finishing up the shift report, Doctor," Ren'shar said. He stood and brought the PADD over. "No casualties over the last two shifts," he said with a smile of his own.

Sandra frowned as she took the device. "Such a boring crew," she muttered. "Bunch of health nuts. Guess I'll have to see if someone brings me a challenge at Sick Call. Oh, wait!" She checked the time. "The Captain and Alenn are sparring now, right?"

"I believe so, Doctor," Ren'shar said.

Sandra was smiling again. "Good! Maybe they'll do enough damage to each other to make my morning entertaining." Sandra knew that her friends liked to spar on the holodeck with the mortality failsafes set mid-range between "full" and "off", so that if they used holographic weapons they would feel the impacts without experiencing the associated physical trauma. This often led them to come to Sick Bay afterward with fascinating neurological injuries. Sandra had them all documented.

"That is possible. Good day, Doctor." Ren'shar left, forcing himself not to think about what kind of Chief Medical Officer would wish for the Captain and First Officer to hurt each other.

* * *

**0837 HOURS**

Ensign Miora Vin had gotten lost in her work at her station in Main Engineering. She was the watch officer in charge of monitoring the ship's Structural Integrity, and she was watching telemetry data from a repair drone working on a micro-fracture in one of the spars in the Saucer part of the blended spaceframe. So focused was she on the information scrolling on her display that she almost missed the approach of the Chief Engineer. That didn't matter. Her symbiote never missed that, and Vin always let his host know when she wasn't paying sufficient attention to the ChEng's proximity. So just when the repair drone was putting the final touches on the repair Miora's stomach churned a little and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and she immediately turned to face Vin's fear.

Lieutenant K'Chara wasn't that frightening, really...most of the time. In her current form she was actually pleasant to look at. She was tall and slim and had long, straight black hair, and her face was sculpted and her lips pouty and sexy. Her eyes were also a pretty shade of sky blue, and they offset her blue-gray skin nicely.

They were also faceted with over a thousand tiny lenses each, and looked exactly like the arachnoid orbs they were despite their humanoid shape, so one generally tried to avoid looking into them, while also trying not to think about the fact that the crisply tailored uniform she seemed to be wearing was actually made from the short, camouflaging hairs that grew out of the carapace that surrounded her body.

Then there was her smile, which completely gave her true nature away.

_Pleasedon'tsmilePleasedon'tsmile..._ Miora thought. It was just her bad luck that K'Chara genuinely liked her, and the lieutenant grinned wide...revealing the mandibles and blood-sucking fangs that lined the top and bottom of her mouth. Vin cringed inside her at the sight.

"Good Morning, Enssssign," K'Chara hissed. "I sssee you're already hard at work."

Miora forced herself to calm down before responding. "Yes, Ma'am. I wanted to get right on to the fracture reported last shift."

"Oh." K'Chara leaned past her to check her console. "This is excellent, Enssign." She straightened up and looked Miora in the eye. "You've been a great asssset to this section ever since you transferred in. You're making wonderful progress as an engineer."

"You think so?"

"I know so. I come from a race of engineers." Suddenly she looked concerned. "But you look a little flush. Is sssomething the matter?" She waited a moment, then grinned again. "I sssee." She waved her clawed hand in front of Miora's symbiote pouch, causing Vin to wriggle around in terror. "It'sss your _companion_ that's nervous."

Miora blushed. "We don't mean any offense, it's just..."

"...Trill symbiotes don't like BUGS!" K'Chara said with a slightly terrifying giggle. "Well, tell him not to worry. I had a big breakfast so I have no need to _catch_ him today. Carry on, Ensssign."

"Aye, Lieutenant," Miora said. With that, K'Chara crouched a little, then leaped into the air and somersaulted right by the top of the reactor's matter injector before landing lightly right next to a station on the upper catwalk of the Engine Room, half-startling the Rigellian working there.

Miora sighed and turned back to her work. A meek protest from Vin prompted her to say out loud, "No matter what you think, she's still better than working with Leadbottom."

* * *

**0840 HOURS**

The call to report to the bridge came just as he was finishing breakfast. Lieutenant Martin Michael McCann took his coffee with him, sipping it from his favorite mug, which boldly announced "The Hottest Guys Are RISAN." He'd finished a third of it by the time the turbolift deposited him on Deck One. He walked down the port curve of the upper level to the command level and found Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Dov Chaifetz sitting in the First Officer's Chair, finishing out Delta Shift in command. "I keep telling you, Dove," McCann said as he approached, "If you see something you don't understand coming at the ship, shoot a torpedo at it and figure it out from the wreckage."

Chaifetz stood and smirked. "Right. And when it turns out to be a shuttle full of Bajoran Vedeks, my testimony at the court martial will be: 'I was just following the orders of the Second Officer who was too lazy to come to the bridge.'"

Both men chuckled. They'd been good friends since they met after being assigned to the Sundown, so much so that the crew considered them the male counterparts to Phua and Alenn. "Well, I'm here now," McCann said, "so what's up?"

"Actually have a minor mystery for you, M'n'M," Chaifetz said. "About an hour ago we started to detect a gravitational anomaly coming from the Barrier."

McCann's mug had almost reached his lips before Chaifetz finished. It hung in front of his face for a moment, then descended as his eyebrow went up. _"You detected **what** coming from the Barrier?"_

"Yeah," Chaifetz said, "that was my reaction. Come on." Both men ascended to the Science station and flanked the crewman at the console. Chaifetz pointed at the relevant data, which was on the right of the screen. "At 0722 the Science station reported the formation of a gravity well in the direction of the Barrier and about a third of a light-year beyond the boundary. I would have discounted it as a sensor error, but, look, the thing's still forming."

McCann checked the values associated with the forming well. His eyes widened a little as he saw that they were ticking up...exponentially. "What's it forming from? There's nothing that far beyond the Barrier but space dust."

"I know," Chaifetz said, "and it can't be coming from the Barrier because Barrier material is massless."

"How're we detecting it at all? The sensors are blind to the Barrier."

"It's the main deflector. Deflector Control reported a drop off of particulate material impacting the dish, so we did a focused scan of the surrounding area and realized the debris was slowly being drawn toward the anomaly...and so are we, by the way."

McCann's head snapped in his direction, then was drawn to the console. He pressed a few contacts and a window opened on the display. He checked the ship's position in space. It's speed was miniscule, but it was drifting toward the anomaly. "Geez, Dove, this is the type of news you're supposed to _start_ with! I'm surprised you waited an hour to call somebody!"

It was a rebuke, but Chaifetz defended himself. "The readings are so outlandish I didn't want to kick it upstairs before I checked to see if this was some insane malfunction of the ship's systems. Can you imagine what Alenn would do if I called her up for this and it turned out to be nothing?"

McCann nodded. He could imagine. "So did you do a diagnostic?"

"Level One. Twice. We'd just completed the second when I called you. Everything's working fine. This is really happening."

McCann turned to the helm. "Thrusters at stationkeeping. Hold our position right here against the pull of the anomaly."

"Aye, Sir!" The helmsman said.

McCann turned to Chaifetz again. "We need to get Alenn and the Captain up here before..."

He was interrupted by a warning alarm that sounded shrill and loud across the bridge...then he was flying, his arms and legs flailing, his mug arcing toward the main viewer, which showed streaks of light and dark along the length of the display...

* * *

In Engineering, Miora Vin screamed and tried to grab onto part of the reactor as she found herself and her colleagues rising uncontrollably...

* * *

In Sick Bay, Sandra Langkowski managed to grab onto her desk to keep from flying into the bulkhead. The Nurse and Corpsman in the examining room had less luck.

* * *

And on the holodeck, a split-second after Phua's sword and Alenn's blades clashed and they pressed into each other, irresistible force sent them tumbling off the hill and into the sky. They started to fly apart, but both women twisted in the air and reached out. They clasped right hands hard, then clasped left hands to right wrists. Now, whatever they were facing, they'd face together.

For starters, they had a great deal of pain to look forward to as they plummeted from a hundred meters to the village below...

**TBC...**


	2. Chase

**DISCLAIMER:**_ Star Trek and all related characters are the property of Paramount Pictures, Inc. and CBS-Paramount Television. No copyright infringement is intended. This work of fiction is for entertainment purposes only and no money has changed hands. The original characters and events are the sole property of the author and may not be used without permission._

* * *

**THE RETURN OF THE HADEANS**

**by Darrin Colbourne**

* * *

She'd often heard Earthpeople say that in moments of crisis time itself seemed to slow down. Of course K'Chara knew this was nonsense. It was simply a side effect of the conscious mind trying to catch up with the subconscious mind's reactions to the event. Understand this, and it's easier to focus on what you're doing at the moment and follow through with more useful actions if necessary.

So she knew even as she tumbled through the air of the Engineering Section that she would be able to stop herself if she twisted just so, even as she was twisting, so she made sure the tiny, barbed, high-friction hairs in the palm of her left hand were fully extended just before the hand impacted on the top of the Matter Injector tube. The hand slid a micrometer before holding fast, causing her to swing up. She used the momentum shift to bring up her other hand and secure it to the tube, then she pulled in her legs. All this took mere seconds.

Secure in her perch, K'Chara looked around the space. There were ten others in the section on this shift. Six had managed to find handholds and stop their flight. Two others were headed for collisions but had braced themselves properly. They would be bruised but not seriously injured.

Two others were out of control and facing serious injury. One of them was Miora Vin.

K'Chara crawled around the tube to the proper position and leaped into the air, this time in a specific direction. She caught up with her Bolian junior grade Damage Control officer just moments before his head would have impacted the ceiling and grabbed him in her arms, then somersaulted and slammed her feet into the ceiling. It took one more second to adjust and she jumped again, heading straight down. She ignored the scream of the officer in her grasp and focused on Miora Vin, catching the Trill in her free arm before her head cracked on the catwalk rail. With an officer in each arm she turned once more and let momentum carry her to the deck. She grunted as her back took the brunt of the fall for three people, then she somersaulted on the bounce and ended her flight with her feet slamming into a bulkhead and holding fast.

She looked at each of her subordinates in turn. They were staring at her wild-eyed. "Grab something!" K'Chara ordered. She didn't know how long she had, and there was more to do.

Miora and the other officer found mouldings to grab onto, freeing K'Chara to leap away again. She bounced around the upper level until she was headed for one of the braced crewmen. She caught him and bounced off the ceiling again. As she caught the last airborne engineer something changed. Momentum that should have carried her across the space again dropped off rapidly, and she dropped with it. With a last effort, she braced her legs for impact and hit the deck feet first. The impact caused her to grunt again, and she dropped her charges before slumping to her knees.

The four officers she'd plucked from the sky gathered around K'Chara with real concern on their faces. Miora tapped her commbadge. "Engineering to Sick Bay! Medical Emergency! Lt. K'Chara's hurt!"

"No, no, I'm fine..." K'Chara said. Her voice was weak but gathering strength. "I just need a moment to recover."

"Can you stand?" Someone else asked. The four helped K'Chara all the way to her feet.

"Thank you," Miora said, gratitude plain in her voice. "You saved us."

"I sssaved you because I _need_ you. This happened all over the ship, yah? The bridge will be looking for answers, and we'll have to do our part, so thank me by returning to your posts and working your hardest!"

All four officers nodded and trotted away. Moments later Engineering was a study in quiet determination after the watchstanders had recovered from the ordeal and set to work checking on the ship and figuring out what happened.

* * *

At first Dian Phua was mesmerized by the sensation of hurling through the air with no aircraft or spacecraft to carry her. She and Alenn were all the way over the center of the village before they started to plunge, bringing the Captain back to her senses. There was actually an easy solution to their problem, but it carried its own risks. Dian tried not to think of that as she called out, "Computer, End Program!"

Instantly, a fall from a hundred meters turned into one from five feet and the houses full of unsuspecting Japanese peasants were replaced by the floor of the holodeck. Both women grunted as they hit the surface shoulders-first and slid a meter or two before coming to a stop.

They finally let go of each other and rolled in opposite directions, moaning in pain. They finally recovered enough to sit up and catch their breath. After a moment, Dian turned to Alenn. The Science Officer was glaring at her. "What?"

"First, you say 'Engage Full Safety Protocols'," Alenn hissed, "_then_ you deactivate the program!"

"You're nitpicking? We're still in one piece, aren't we?"

"Tell that to our shoulders." Alenn was rubbing her right one for dramatic effect. "And our hips."

"Speak for your own hip," Dian said. "Mine was properly covered."

Alenn smirked at that. "So I take it that wasn't a surprise you planned for our workout?"

"Of course not. We were weightless. Why would I program microgravity into a feudal Japanese setting?"

"You've done stranger. Without a special setting gravity on the holodeck defaults to ship's gravity. So what happened to..."

The Yellow Alert klaxon interrupted her, followed by Lt. McCann's voice. "All hands, Yellow Alert! Damage Control and Medical teams to all decks! Captain Phua report to the bridge!"

"We're about to find out." The women helped each other up and exited the holodeck at a brisk pace and headed for the turbolift forward. On the way, Dian said, "I want you to stop at your quarters and change."

"I can't. Yellow Alert has sounded. My place is on the bridge."

"Exactly. Yellow Alert has sounded and I don't want any bridge officers being distracted by you and your battle bikini."

"Don't be silly. This is a focused, professional crew, and my outward appearance won't affect their job performance at all. I'd stake my life on it."

Just as they reached the turbolift a crewman came trotting out of it. His eyes locked onto Alenn as he passed and didn't unlock until he missed the curve of the corridor and his body collided with the holodeck arch. When he slumped to the deck, Dian arched an eyebrow at Alenn. "Your life, eh?"

"You can be so smug sometimes..." Alenn muttered before they entered the 'lift. Inside, she called out, "Deck Five."

"Deck One," Dian said.

The 'lifts seemed to be working fine, taking less than a minute to deliver both women to their destinations. Soon Dian stepped out onto the bridge and her first thought was to look at the main viewer. What she saw made her gasp.

There was a _hole_ in the Barrier.

She tore her eyes away from that sight long enough to survey the bridge crew. Everyone was nursing some type of injury. Lt. McCann was standing by the Flight Control station rubbing his left side. It looked like he'd injured a rib.

Dian walked down to join him. He turned to her just as she stopped next to him. She pointed at the viewer. He glanced at it and nodded. "Yeah, that was much bigger a while ago."

She took a longer look and realized that Barrier material was collapsing inward, visibly shrinking the hole. Still, the hole's very existence was noteworthy. "What happened?"

"Something _big_ entered the galaxy through the Barrier," McCann said, "an object with such a strong gravitational pull it swamped our artificial gravity and Inertia Damping field."

"We were_ falling!"_ Dian said.

McCann nodded again. "For about thirty-three seconds, during which time we had absolutely no attitude control. We were just getting the ship reoriented and we've started a Level 1 diagnostic on all systems."

"What about the object?"

"We're tracking it." He reached down to the helm controls and checked a reading. "Course is now 290 mark 3, speed equivalent to Warp 1.4."

"Equivalent?"

"Yet another oddity about the thing is that it doesn't have a warp signature."

"Odd indeed. Why aren't we pursuing?"

"I was going to wait until the Medical teams had a chance to finish their work. There are casualties on every deck, including this one. We have time. We have a good sensor lock on it and it's not moving that fast."

"Very good. Keep the conn a while longer. I'll be in my Ready Room."

"Aye, Captain," McCann said. Dian was already walking away.

In the Ready Room, Dian started to strip out of the yukata as soon as the door closed. She laid the pieces of it carefully on a guest chair, then went to work on the decorations in her hair. Only when she was down to her panties, with her long black hair trailing down her back, did she retrieve the spare uniform from one of the drawers in her desk. She put on the trousers, red undershirt and black boots. A twinge in her shoulder made her leave off the black and gray tunic until she could be seen by medical personnel. With that done, she found a simple elastic band and pulled her hair into a ponytail. She draped the tunic on her forearm as she returned to the bridge.

"Okay, Lieutenant, I'll take over," she said.

"Yes, Ma'am," McCann said. He headed for the Ops station, taking a moment to pat the shoulder of Lt. Chaifetz, who was manning the helm.

Dian went over to the Captain's Chair and tossed the tunic on it instead of sitting. Then she turned to look at the viewer. She contemplated the shrinking hole for a few moments while she listened idly to McCann managing the shipwide diagnostic.

Around this time Dr. Sandra Langkowski and a medical corpsman arrived on the bridge and got to work. The doctor walked right over to her friend. "Anything I need to look at?"

"Left shoulder," Dian said, then with a blush added, "and hip."

Sandra ran a medical tricorder over the affected areas, then applied a hypospray to the bare shoulder. "Gotta expose you a bit..." She said as she crouched.

"Do what you must," Dian said.

Sandra unzipped the side of the trousers to bare Dian's hip, to which she also applied the hypospray. Once done, she zipped Dian back up and stood. "Just some bruising. You're in good and numerous company."

Dian put on her tunic as she asked, "How numerous?"

"Most of the crew. Anyone with broken bones or deep cuts is being taken to Sick Bay, but most of the injuries are bumps and bruises, with a heaping side helping of spacesickness. Everyone with those symptoms is being treated at their posts."

"Spacesickness?"

Sandra chuckled. "Yeah. Wait'll you see the_ Sun Spot._ They'll be mopping up in there for days."

"There is something _so_ wrong with you..." Dian muttered

"That just means I fit in around here. So where's Alenn?"

"She's..." The sound of the turbolift opening drew their attention in time for them watch Alenn step onto the bridge. "...right there. Glad you could join us, Commander!"

Alenn didn't miss a beat as she walked down to the command level. "Heaven forbid I report to the bridge out-of-uniform, Captain," she said. She was now properly dressed in her Starfleet uniform, although she still wore her tiara.

Sandra approached as Alenn turned to look at the viewer. "Anything I need to look at?"

Without hesitation or embarrassment, Alenn said, "Right shoulder and hip."

Sandra's eyebrow went up, and with a glance toward Dian she spent a moment trying to imagine what position the two of them had to be in to receive those injuries simultaneously. "One of these days you'll have to tell me what you two really get up to during your workouts."

Alenn smirked and took her right arm out of her tunic. "I'm sure you'd find it terribly boring, Doctor."

"I'll bet." Sandra treated Alenn's injuries and checked on her corpsman. "How're you doing?"

The young man was just finishing up with the Tactical Officer. "All done here."

"Get down to Deck Seven and see if you can help out." She turned to Dian. "I'm headed back. You'll have a full casualty report within the hour. Just try not to do anything to add to it before then."

"No promises," Dian said. Sandra trotted away to the 'lift, while Alenn walked up to the Science station. Finally, Dian sat in the Captain's chair.

"Mr. Chaifetz," she said, "match bearings with the object. Pursue and overtake."

"Aye, Captain," Chaifetz said. "Pursuit course laid in, engaging at Warp Two."

The_ Sundown_ came about and sped away from the Barrier for a few moments before flashing into Warp.

**TBC...**


End file.
